


You're the Only One

by ProblemWithTrouble



Series: 00Q [26]
Category: Inception (2010), James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, It's more of a cameo from Arthur and Eames, Jealous James Bond, M/M, dreamshare comes to MI6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:57:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblemWithTrouble/pseuds/ProblemWithTrouble
Summary: Arthur and Eames are brought in to consult with MI6 a bit and Bond really doesn't like this Arthur guy.There had been rumors about Dreamsharing for a long time. Bond had ignored them since he didn’t believe he lived in a ‘70s sci-fi show. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. He was married to Q, after all.“We’re bringing in specialists to handle Sinclair,” Mallory said at the end of his debrief with Bond.





	You're the Only One

“We’re bringing in specialists to handle Sinclair,” Mallory said at the end of his debrief with Bond. 

Bond had gotten back from the southern coast of France where he had grabbed Sinclair the day before and was finishing his debrief with Mallory. It had been nearing midnight when they had finally gotten Sinclair secure and Mallory hadn’t been interested in hearing the story just then. He was just happy to have the target captured alive for once. “What kind of specialists?” Bond asked. 

“Information extraction specialists.” Mallory was watching Bond carefully, waiting for some sort of reaction.

Usually, Bond wouldn’t have been told what happened to the people he brought back, when he managed to get them back alive. He also didn’t ask. He had always assumed they had people who got the information out of the prisoners so that he could go on his next mission. People who weren’t phased by screams of agony and never thought to put someone out of their misery with a bullet to the brain. Everyone had their calling, Bond supposed. “Don’t we have our own people for that?” 

“Not that kind of specialist.” Mallory continued to watch Bond while the silence stretched out between them. He hadn’t decided if he was going to tell Bond the whole story when he had brought up the specialists, and he was still working it out. “Dreamshare. They’ll be pulling the information from his subconscious directly.” Mallory took manila two folders from the corner of his desk and handed them over to Bond. 

There had been rumors about Dreamsharing for a long time. Bond had ignored them since he didn’t believe he lived in a ‘70s sci-fi show. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. He was married to Q, after all.

Bond opened the first folder. A mug shot of a man with a square jaw and a smirk looked back up at him. 

“Arthur and Eames are what they go by and you’ll be going under with them to make sure everything goes to plan,” Mallory said. “Study up. They got here about twenty minutes ago and are in one of the offices near the holding cells in the basement.”

“Of course,” Bond said, standing up and tucking the folders under his arms.

“Leave the files with Moneypenny outside. You can read them there. We can’t afford to have those files get away from us.”

“You have the men themselves walking around and their files are too dangerous?” Bond smirked at Mallory.

Mallory, as usual, was not impressed with Bond’s humor. “Do you often show your cards when you gamble, 007?” When Bond didn’t respond, he continued. “Give the files back to Miss Moneypenny when you’re finished.”

Bond nodded and left the rom. In Moneypenny’s office he sat down in the chair across from her desk. She looked up at him with a smile but didn’t say anything while Bond read, her typing and clicking a steading stream in the background. 

Arthur was a pretty man with a look to that made him look three steps ahead and a smirk that made it clear he knew it. The list of suspected AKAs ran down the front and back of a page, most of them with Arthur as the first name and a generic white American last name attached at the end. He was suspected of a handful of murders, and countless dream thefts. There was also suspicion that he was part of the original joint experiment between the US and British armies that created the technology in the first place. Neither department was willing to confirm or deny this.

Eames’s list of AKAs was just as long as Arthur’s but there was a lot less consistency in them, though most of them started with an E, either in the last name or the first. He was also suspected of being in the original project, but no one was willing to confirm it. There weren’t any murders on the list of crimes, but the amount of art theft was almost comical. 

They didn’t seem loyal to anything except themselves and Arthur seemed to have a connection of some man named Cobb who had been suspected of murder until the charges had been dropped mysteriously. They only caused trouble for companies and the wealthy; who seemed content to chase them themselves which might have been why there were such robust files but no trace of an MI6 job to put a stop to either of them. 

When he flipped shut the files and tossed them to the corner of Moneypenny’s desk as he stood, she finally looked up from her computer. “Pretty impressive.”

“If you go in for that sort of thing,” Bond said with a wink.

“You’re just bitter because no one knows who they are and everyone you’ve ever encountered knows your name before you walk into the room.”

“A reputation that proceeds me isn’t always a disadvantage,” he shot back.

“You’re supposed to be a spy, James. Try subtly someday.”

“But explosions work so much better,” he said with a grin. 

She rolled her eyes as she took the two files and put them in her desk drawer. “They’re in room B207.” 

“Thank you, Miss Moneypenny.”

“Your welcome, James.”

Bond took the elevator to the second basement floor where only a handful of vacant offices and some holding cells were located. He found B207 with a security guard standing outside that nodded to Bond when he passed. Inside the room Q, Arthur, and Eames were all laying on office chairs that had been reclined back and there was a medical officer monitoring them. 

“They just went under. Should be up in about four minutes,” she said to Bond when he entered. She was monitoring Q closely. 

A few seconds later, Arthur and Eames both shook themselves awake. “Fuck,” Eames said after a second. 

“You can bring him out,” Arthur said to the medical officer. 

She pressed a button on the machine sitting between them and Q blinked awake slowly. 

“Ah,” Q said when he spotted Bond. “There you are.”

“Here I am.”

“You can’t go anywhere near the job,” Arthur said to Q, rubbing at his temple. “Your militarization is too sensitive. It’d get set off before we could do anything.”

Q smiled at Arthur. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” 

Arthur smiled back. “Good. It was one.” He dropped the smile and turned to Bond. “Are you the other one?”

“It would seem so.”

“Have you dreamed before?” Eames asked. 

“Not the way you do it,” Bond said. 

Eames laughed. “Few do.” 

“We need to plug you in and see if you’re stable enough,” Arthur said.

“Not today. Tomorrow. Today we’ll go over the plan and the set up,” Q said.

Arthur fixed him with a considering look. Like someone looking at a puzzle. Someone who liked puzzles a lot looking at a puzzle. “Okay.”

He was presented with a floorplan to the chateau that Bond had been in two days ago when retrieving Sinclair but set up with dead ends and paradoxes and more staircases than there were in the actual chateau. Arthur assured Bond that he wouldn’t have to memorize the plan exactly in a way that one might explain addition to a six-year-old. Then he was told that Arthur would be fending off any projections, and that Eames would be distracting the mark while Bond broke into the vault in the office, since he had broken into the real one already and he was the one that wanted the information. They’d have two hours to complete the job, which would only be ten minutes top side, but if they fucked it up, they’d have to scrap everything and start over to not rouse the suspicions of his subconscious, even if it wasn’t militarized. 

After a few hours Arthur and Eames were escorted out of the building by the security guard and Bond was left alone in the office with Q. “We’ll be using some of our older equipment to train you tonight,” Q said, standing up and cracking his back. “Theirs will be a little more real and clear looking so we might want to get you a totem.”

“A what?” 

“This is all a bit much isn’t it?”

“I can handle new, Q. This is madness,” Bond said. 

“I know, love. Let’s head back to my office. I need to answer a few of these emails and then we can plug you in.”

Bond followed Q out of the room and tried not to feel too bad about how much he really didn’t know about the world, or apparently the tech that Q worked on. Or the fact that he was in fact struggling to keep up and the handsome, well-dressed man didn’t have any of that trouble. Arthur. Bond really hated that guy.

In Q-Branch Bond was sent down to the chemist that usually worked on truth serums for the Double-0s to work with and got the run-down of the somnacin that they’d be pumping into his system to link his dreams up to Arthur and Eames. 

“I should have known the rush request was for you,” Stephanie said as soon as Bond walked in. She had gray hair that was cut short and actually wore a lab coat unlike a lot of the Q-Branch staff. 

“Just keeping you on your toes,” Bond said. 

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re lucky the analysis is even done.” She opened up a file on her tablet and handed it over to Bond to look through the make-up of the somnacin. He didn’t know what most of the words on the report were. “If anything it should be clearer than the last batches they had. I’d love to know who it was they got it from. Some of the things in it I never would have thought to add. My guess is your balance could be compromised afterwards but without testing it myself I can’t swear to it.”

“Balance?” 

She scrunched up her face and cocked her head to one side. “I think it’s going to heighten your inner ear sensitivity which could put you a little off balance but no more than a couple of hours.”

Bond shrugged and handed back her tablet. She gave him a case holding four vials in foam, with the fifth one empty. 

“I tested a bit from each so you shouldn’t need to worry.” 

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try to find out where they got it.”

“If you manage that I might let you take some of my work into the field,” she said. 

“Really?”

She winked at him. “Let’s find out, shall we?”

He winked back and left the room to go find Q again in his private office. There was a large machine with tubes and a screen sitting next to the couch. Q looked up at him with a smile. “Did you get the all clear from Stephanie?” 

Bond nodded. “What’s this?”

“That is an ASIV. The stationary version of the equipment they have. They changed some of the equipment so that it was portable, but it should work the same. The main thing is the somnacin.” Q held out his hand for the case that Bond handed over.

“That’s a lot to put in that case.”

“Arthur made some pretty impressive design changes,” Q said. He plugged the vial into the machine, peeled off his cardigan and rolled up his sleeve to expose his inner elbows. “Roll up your sleeves, I can’t find a vein through your jacket.” Q flashed him a smile that made the knot that had appeared in his chest at the mention of Arthur ease.

“If you wanted me shirtless all you had to do was ask,” Bond said, taking off his jacket and rolling up the sleeves. 

“Or scroll through my phone. Those pictures you send me don’t just disappear after they’re sent,” Q said with a grin. 

“I’m shocked you would keep such pictures on your phone, Quartermaster.” He sat on the couch next to the machine and presented his arm to Q. 

“Then stop sending them,” Q said, as he stuck Bond with the needle and secured it in place with a piece of tape. 

Q plugged himself in next and sat in a chair on the other side of the machine. “Are you ready?”

“Born ready, Q.”

“We’ll see about that.” Q hit the black button and in less than a second Bond was gone. 

They were standing on a beach; one Bond didn’t immediately recognize. There was a beachfront bar from their honeymoon in Spain, but there were also colorful sheds that lined the beach in Brighton where they had stayed for Bond’s fiftieth birthday, and chairs and umbrellas that reminded Bond of their trip to Italy. Q was standing in front of him in a tank top and swimshorts with small palm trees on them. They were a pair that Bond had tried to get him to buy before their honeymoon, but Q had refused. The trees glowed in the dark. 

“How are you feeling?” Q asked. 

“Where are we?” Bond asked, looking around. 

“Dreaming remember?”

“You weren’t kidding about it feeling real.” 

“Of course not.” Bond took a step forward, looking up around and trying to find more inconstancies. “I didn’t want to use anywhere that actually existed, so I just threw a few details together. Let’s go for a walk.”

Bond nodded and followed Q down a path at the tree line. 

“When you’re dreaming, you’re vulnerable, James, so I need you to pay attention to what I tell you while we’re down here.” 

“I always listen to you.” A few rollerbladers skated by, avoiding Bond and Q easily. 

Q fixed Bond with a look. “Of course, you do. You won’t be in your mind the same way that they will be in Sinclair’s but a few of the projections will still be yours and your secrets are just as vulnerable. Is there somewhere on the Sinclair property that you would hide something that Arthur and Eames wouldn’t think to search?”

Bond raked his mind for details of the Sinclair place, but it was all exposed to the two thieves and he couldn’t think of anywhere that would hide it well enough away from them. 

“I usually build a safe under the floorboards once we’re in there. That way the subject has already filled theirs the way we need to. Try.”

Bond thought long and hard about the floor of the bar they had drank drinks in as the sun set and imagined a safe and filled it with his own secrets. Bond nodded towards the bar and went, tearing up the boards of the floor and the safe was there but it was empty. 

“It’s fine. There was at least a safe. Your brain will do the rest if you relax.” Q’s smile was patient but couldn’t quite hide his concern. 

They were sending Bond in because he knew a lot about people that he had killed. People that that had been quickly swept away. He didn’t know much beyond that and never knew more than he needed to. Spying wasn’t about holding the information himself, not like it had been back in the Cold War. It was mostly about him grabbing a microchip, shooting the boss, and getting out. 

The list of secrets he had read more like a roster of the people he killed than facts that put Six at risk. It would be a risk to him if they got a hold of the information and sold it to interested parties, but it wouldn’t hurt Six and it wouldn’t put Queen and Country at risk. 

“I am also your husband and your quartermaster, so secrets from me look a little different from what they will with the others,” Q said. He was using the voice that he knew soothed Bond, the voice he tended to slip into when there had been a bad mission and Bond was back home trying to figure out what he should have done differently. He knew that knew Bond knew he was fucking up at he was trying to placate him. 

Bond put on his biggest smile, covered up his feelings of inadequacy the same way he had when he’d finally asked Q out in the first place. “You do already know about my skeletons in the closets.” 

“Exactly. Let’s keep walking. I want you to try to change some things. Just little things. It’s fun. Give yourself a gun.” 

Bond stood up and went around the bar to walk with Q down the beach some more. After a few steps Bond felt his Walther PPK appear in his right hand, the lights on recognizing his palm print. 

Q’s face when Bond looked up was relieved. “When you die in the dream you just wake up so if anything starts to go too sideways, just shoot your way out.” 

“I think I can manage that,” Bond said. 

“One should hope, 007,” Q said, leaning forward and kissing Bond. Music started to play overhead. “That’s the ASIV saying we only have a few minutes left. The same thing with happen with the PASIV, it’s just manual. I’ll put some headphones on Arthur and the music will play through to all of you.” 

Bond closed his eyes and kissed Q in warm sunlight and let the warmth flood through him too.

Bond’s eyes snapped open to look at the ceiling tiles of Q’s office. He blinked twice to clear the odd tear from his eye. The ASIV was playing the same music from the dream out loud until Q turned it off. Bond pulled the needle out from himself and Q took it to detach it from the tubing and throw them into the biowaste trash. It had always seemed odd that Q had a biowaste bin in his office until that very moment. 

“There is one more thing and then we can go home,” Q said, going to his desk and sorting through his top drawer.

Bond cracked his neck and waited for Q to bring him whatever it was. After a minute Q held his hand out to Bond. He took the offered object but only recognized it once it hit his palm. 

His stomach sank. It was Q’s engagement ring. He didn’t wear it at work because the metal didn’t mix well with the electrical work he did but he did keep it close most of the time. Until now.

“It’ll be your totem. It’s the only thing I know of that you’ve carried around with you for months without any trouble. You know exactly how it feels, weighs, sounds like. I doubt I even know it as well as you do. If you have it and it’s right, you’ll know you’re awake. If you’re dreaming, you’ll be able to change it, and no one will ever be able to create it completely right.”

“I’m only going to dream a few times, Q. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”

“I’m serious, James. Deamshare can mess with the head of the most stable person and considering the amount of concussions you’ve had I wouldn’t call you that, and neither would your doctor. I will not lose you to dreams because you think you’re going to wake up if you blow your own brains out. Take the ring.” Q’s face was stormy, his jaw set in the way that meant trouble if Bond decided to argue. 

Bond closed his hand around the ring. It did feel good to have it back. Q was right, before he had proposed he had carried it around for months, and he knew it better than anything. Except Q. Never better than Q.

“Good. Let’s go home.”

* * *

James drove them home while Q rode shotgun and ordered dinner that would arrive about ten minutes after they did. He didn’t say much but Q didn’t think anything of it since they were tired and James had had a lot to take in with the introduction of dreamshare into his life. 

Q didn’t start to think that maybe something was a little off until he tossed his jacket over the back of the chair and on top of their cat Ada, to mess with her, and then left it there after Ada came sprinting out, that maybe something was off. Bond was picky about leaving his parka lying about. It was one of his pet peeves and Q fixed it when he remembered an hour later but didn’t fail to notice the lack of any reaction from James. 

He also noticed when the food arrived and they had messed up the order that James didn’t bother to complain. Q told a few dumb jokes that had James laughing even louder and easier than he usually did. Sometimes James was like that. Sometimes nights were easy and nothing weighed heavy on them. Based on the day that they had had and the fact that Q had been ready to start an actual blow-out fight over the ring, this wasn’t one of those nights. 

When they had eaten, James did the dishes by himself with a kiss and a smile, and they had both showered and tucked themselves into bed Q broke the ice. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing.”

Q rolled over in the dark and frowned at him, even if it would be hard to see in the dark. “James. I can tell when something’s not right.”

“Why does something have to be wrong for me to try and have a nice night in with my husband?” James asked, rolling over to face Q and run a hand from his hip to his shoulder. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Q said. “Which means you can tell me what’s actually going on.” 

“Why is it suddenly a crime if I don’t care where you put your parka, darling,” James said, leaning forward and kissing Q sweetly. 

“I knew you cared about the parka. Are you worried about Dreaming?” 

“I’m not worried about interrogating someone, Q. It’s what I do. I just don’t like that Arthur guy,” James said, his patience wearing thin. 

Q moved a little closer so that they were pressed ankle to chest. “What’s wrong with him? Other than the obvious criminal element.”

“You like a bad boy,” Bond said but it was a little sharper than he had probably intended. 

Q cocked his head to the side. “Are you jealous?” 

“I don’t get jealous. It’d be a little hypocritical.” Bond pulled him closer and kissed his neck. 

“We’ve talked about this. You’re allowed to have feelings no matter what your job is.” Q pulled back and kissed him on the lips. “You have nothing to worry about from Arthur. I love you. And he’s not my type.”

“Eames then? Broad shoulders and muscles?” James said and he was joking now which was a step in the right direction.

“My type has gotten a little specific these days. You’re the only one.”

**Author's Note:**

> for anon who asked for: _How about this for a prompt.. Arthur/Eames come to MI6 ...Arthur instantly connects with Q causing a real jealousy from Bond.. so much that Eames has to hold him back from destroying Arthur._
> 
> and another anon asked for: _If you're still accepting prompts, can I request a jealous Bond for 00q?_
> 
> I might have missed the mark on the first one a bit, but the idea of Bond compensating for his jealously by trying to be a perfect husband kinda kidnapped me.
> 
> If you want you can send me a prompt in the comments or on [my tumblr](https://problemwithtrouble.tumblr.com)


End file.
